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John Kerry’s Calumny Against Israel

After having said to a closed-door meeting of the Trilateral Commission that Israel could become an “apartheid state” if it doesn’t reach a peace deal with the Palestinians, Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement saying he “would have chosen a different word” if he had to do it all over again.

In fact, Kerry’s initial comments clearly reflect his unvarnished views; his backtracking is merely the result of the criticisms he’s received. Remember, just a few weeks ago Secretary Kerry testified before Congress and falsely placed all of the blame for the collapse of the most recent negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on Israel.

As for the calumny against Israel by the secretary of state, let’s start out with a few observations, the first of which is that Israel is the only country in the region that permits citizens of all faiths to worship freely and openly. A few facts: Around 20 percent of Israeli citizens are not Jewish, with most of them being Arab. And while Jews are not permitted to live in many Arab countries, Arabs are granted full citizenship, have the right to vote in Israel, and have served in the Knesset. Consider this: Arabs living in Israel have more rights and are freer than most Arabs living in Arab countries, with Arab women in Israel enjoying the same rights and status as men.

As for a two-state solution: Israel, bone-weary of war, has repeatedly offered the Palestinians their own homeland–at Camp David in 2000, in Taba in 2001, and again (from Ehud Olmert) in 2008. The offers were enormously generous: Palestinian statehood, the West Bank, Gaza, the division of Jerusalem, and more. The reaction? Palestinian rejectionism, followed in some cases by a new intifada. (For a more expansive discussion of this matter, see this definitive column by Charles Krauthammer.) That rejectionism still exists to this day.

But there’s still more.

On the matter of “land for peace,” Israel has shown its good faith repeatedly. For example, Israel offered to return all the land it captured during the 1967 war in exchange for peace and normal relations. The offer was rejected in August 1967, when Arab leaders met in Khartoum and adopted a formula that became known as the “three no’s”: no peace with Israel, no negotiation with Israel, and no recognition of Israel. (For the record, the PLO, which was committed to the destruction of Israel, was founded in 1964, three years before Israel controlled the West Bank or Gaza. The 1948 and 1967 wars against Israel happened before the so-called occupied territories and settlements ever became an issue.)

In 1978, under the leadership of Likud’s Menachem Begin, Israel returned to Egypt the Sinai Desert in exchange for Egypt’s recognition of Israel and normalized relations.

In 1994, Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan, which involved compromise on territory, water rights, and border crossings.

In 2000, Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon.

In Gaza in 2005, Israel did what no Arab nation (when it controlled the West Bank and Gaza) had ever done: provide the Palestinians with the opportunity for self-rule. In response, Israel was shelled by thousands of rockets and mortar attacks. Hamas used Gaza as its launching point.

John Kerry is part of an administration that has a very troubling reflex against Israel, a nation whose sacrifices for peace exceed those of any other country and whose achievements and moral accomplishments are staggering. I will leave it to others to speculate what could possibly motivate them. Suffice it to say that enemies of the Jewish state will latch on to Kerry’s invocation of apartheid.

In reflecting on Kerry’s incendiary language, I was reminded of another Democrat. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan was serving as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a resolution declaring that “Zionism is racism” was adopted. A majority of the world’s nations condemned Israel, claiming there was an “unholy alliance between South African racism and Zionism.” Ambassador Moynihan rose to speak, declaring that the “United States … does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.”

It was a luminous and proud moment. It’s a travesty that almost 40 years later, another Democrat, John Kerry, has himself committed an infamous act.